I almost spit out my cereal this morning when I pulled up my virtual LA Times and read this headline: “Iraq-pullout backers lack plan to deal with violence.” I thought I must be on the wrong website or dreaming. I wonder if the paper version had the same headline. That might be asking a bit too much. Clicking through to the article I found another jarring headline: “Pullout proposal lacking a Plan B: Those who want troops out of Iraq acknowledge that sectarian violence will likely follow.”
What is this world coming to when one of the more liberal leaning big city newspapers actually reports accurately on what Democrats say and do? Holding Democrats accountable for their policy positions is just not something you see very often in the MSM. We’re not getting the near-unanimous vote TVD references below, but this is still a pleasant surprise.
As to the substance, most Democrats just don’t give a damn what happens to Iraq and the Iraqis. The Majority Leader calls what happens after a withdrawal “hypothetical” and he’s just “not going to get into it.” I have a question for Mr. Reid: When offering up legislation, especially about a war, exactly what would not be hypothetical? He’s simply pissed off that he has to answer for the consequences of the Democrat position. How dare you question The Great Majority Leader! Yes, Mr. Reid, now you know what it’s like to be a Republican, especially a conservative one, all the time.
Anyway, most of this is just a show for the kook fringe left of the Democrat Party. The left wing of that Party is simply devoid of any notion of reality. This war is just like Vietnam to them, so we need to just get the hell out and the Iraqis be damned, just like millions of Vietnamese were then. The implications for our national security don’t cross their mind; they probably don’t even care.
Fortunately for our national security, many Democrats realize that a "precipitous withdrawal" would be a disaster, thus the 94-3 vote. President Bush, most Republicans and a few Democrats understand that a failed state in the Middle East run by Al Qaeda is not an option. That is why even the harshest critics of the president say we can’t leave Iraq or the region entirely. The dirty little secret I mention below is getting out, and that puts the Iraq war debate on a whole new footing.
For the record, only 3 paragraphs and a fragment of the fourth made it to the front page before the rest was buried on page A12 by what my pal Patterico calls the LAT's "Power of the Jump”™.
ReplyDeleteThey almost had me there for a bit...
Figures. And those good liberals at the Times thought they were pulling one over on us.
ReplyDeleteIt's a beautiful thing, hiding something in plain sight.
ReplyDeleteHad they put one more sentence on the front page after
Some proponents of a withdrawal declined to discuss what the United States should do if the violence increases.
we'd have got
"That's a hypothetical. I'm not going to get into it," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.
and the truth would be laid bare.
At this late date, there's absolutely nothing left that hasn't been said on the issue in this country. All we can hope for is for the media to let the sides speak for themselves, and Reid says plenty there.